The Talent You Need May Be Right Under Your Nose

By Loralyn Mears, PhD

Imagine being a “fly on the wall” observing a talent manager going back and forth between two final candidates. The company has spent months trying to fill the position, not to mention the investment it has made in advertising the role, paying recruiters and moving one candidate after another through its internal interview process.

Both candidates have the same accreditations. Candidate A has 14 years of experience steadily climbing the same functional ladder, with a history that demonstrates growth through advancement based on titles and increasing responsibilities.

Candidate B has 18 years of experience. They have built two businesses in different industries, successfully exiting one and folding the other. Candidate B has launched multiple products, led cross-functional initiatives and weathered many economic storms. Along the way, Candidate B appears to have reinvented themselves several times.

The résumé for Candidate A tells a clean story—one that is easily consumed by distracted, overwhelmed humans and AI talent tools designed to streamline HR functions. Candidate B’s story is more complicated and difficult to parse into a coherent summary that accurately maps to the job description and expectations of the hiring manager.

Neither the talent managers nor the AI hiring software can readily interpret what makes Candidate B valuable. B is tagged as a potential “wild card,” while A is tagged as the “safe choice.” The manager may believe they are making the right decision by hiring Candidate A, but also sense that something is off.

Perhaps they have more than a hiring problem to manage. They may be facing an emerging organizational risk: Stronger, more adaptable leaders are being overlooked precisely at a time when adaptability should be regarded as a superpower.

I call this emerging talent acquisition threat to organizational viability “Misinterpretation Risk,” which I define as “the growing likelihood that capable people are misunderstood, underestimated, and/or overlooked because their experience cannot be easily interpreted by increasingly standardized evaluation systems.”

What We Say Versus What We Do

World-class organizations and agencies are slowly galvanizing around a shared vision for what future-ready talent looks like. The World Economic Forum, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the American Management Association itself emphasize the growing importance of adaptability, critical thinking, decision making, continuous learning, resilience and human-centered capabilities such as emotional intelligence.

However, my research suggests a problem: a fundamental misalignment between what we say we want in a candidate versus who we hire and why we hire them.

Modern work increasingly demands talent that can learn quickly, navigate ambiguity, lead through uncertainty and apply knowledge across disciplines. Organizations generally agree that these are essential skills, yet they are simultaneously rejecting the candidates who possess precisely those capabilities. Ironically, these are exactly the skills AI cannot easily replace.

The more uncertain the work environment becomes, the more organizations say they want adaptability. Yet they put their efforts into standardizing their hiring. That is the paradox.

Conformity is rewarded by platforms and procurement processes, including hiring, that are designed to favor speed over nuance and clarity over complexity. Hiring systems prioritize standardized signals because those signals are easy to compare. But when humans and HR software tools encounter the complexity of Candidate B, they often compress those distinctions into broader categories.

That compression nullifies the potential value of Candidate B. The environment becomes hostile to the differences that are fighting to stay visible in a system designed to reward sameness and predictability.

The Unseen Value of the Generalist

Let’s take it one step further. Ah, yes, the generalist.

These are the people most capable of navigating change, yet they are often the first to disappear in systems that can’t interpret nonlinear complexity. Narrow signals are rewarded. Stability outmaneuvers flexibility every time.

Generalists often bring range, adaptability and pattern recognition. They may have learned across industries, built from scratch, shifted direction under pressure or solved problems that did not fit a neat role description. But the very breadth that makes them useful can make them harder to categorize.

That is how capable people become invisible.

The sameness trap punishes the qualities we claim to value. Organizations say they admire innovation, adaptability, creativity and original thinking. Yet the systems used to score those qualities often favor predictability and familiarity over uniqueness.

This creates a tension between being discernible to the market as different, yet findable only by being the same.

From Misinterpretation Risk to Interpretation Success

Talent evaluation needs to shift so organizations can more accurately interpret a person’s capabilities.

To achieve interpretation success, organizations need to ask different questions instead of only asking, “Can this candidate perform the advertised role?”

• Are we evaluating for capability or familiarity?
• Do our hiring systems and processes reward linear careers or adaptive ones?
• Would our best unconventional employee even make it through our current hiring process?

For decades, organizations have competed for talent. But what makes an organization successful is shifting. Going forward, companies will compete on something even more fundamental: the ability to recognize talent.

In the age of AI, lists of capabilities and skills surfaced by résumé scanners are not going to confer organizational advantage. That is no longer good enough. A transformation in HR is urgently needed to help organizations interpret those capabilities correctly and reproducibly.

The organizations that learn to reduce Misinterpretation Risk in talent management will gain access to people their competitors never even realize they overlooked. And hence, they’ll win the war on talent.

Loralyn Mears, PhD, is the founder and CEO of STEERus INC, a professional development and strategic advisory firm that helps organizations and leaders navigate complexity, strengthen decision making and reduce misinterpretation risk in the age of AI. She is the author of Misinterpreted: The Hidden Risk Making Brands & Leaders Invisible in the Age of AI.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Misinterpretation Risk?

Misinterpretation Risk is the likelihood that capable people are misunderstood, underestimated or overlooked because their experience cannot be easily interpreted by standardized evaluation systems.

Why might organizations overlook strong candidates?

Organizations often reward clear, linear career paths because they are easier for people and AI hiring tools to interpret. Candidates with broader, less conventional experience may be seen as risky even when they have strong adaptive capabilities.

Why are generalists often missed?

Generalists can be difficult to categorize. Their value may come from range, adaptability and cross-disciplinary thinking, but hiring systems often favor narrow signals and familiar career patterns.

What is the “sameness trap”?

The sameness trap occurs when organizations say they value innovation, adaptability and originality, but use systems that reward predictability, conformity and familiar profiles.

How can organizations improve talent evaluation?

Organizations can shift from evaluating familiarity to evaluating capability. They should ask whether their systems reward linear careers over adaptive ones and whether their best unconventional employees would even make it through the current hiring process.